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Friday Fun Day #FFD: Best of Spacewalking

Friday Fun Day #FFD: Best of Spacewalking

By Astiles on March 19, 2010

This week was the anniversary of the very first human being to step out of a spacecraft and into the cosmos. Cosmonaut Alexei Leonov spent 10 minutes outside of his Voskhod 2 spacecraft on March 18, 1965, and this week marked the 45th anniversary of the event. It is amazing to see how far we've come in 45 years -- better airlocks, spacesuits, and astronauts/cosmonauts regularly venturing out into the vacuum of space to perform work on spacecraft and the International Space Station.

To celebrate, this Friday Fun Day is dedicated to spacewalking. Send in your favorite spacewalking photos (with the spacewalker's name and mission number, if you know them!) and we'll create a photo collage in this blog post.

Here is the first picture to get this party started: Alexei Leonov outside of the Voskhod 2! (Photography has also come a long way in 45 years, yeah?)

Today, we announce that after close consultation with our teams over the last few months, that there will not be a launch attempt by our March 31st, 2018 deadline, and the grand prize of the $30 million Google Lunar XPRIZE will go unclaimed.

While we are disappointed at the result, XPRIZE is exploring a number of ways to proceed from here, and we are proud of the impact that the Google Lunar XPRIZE has achieved to date. Stay tuned for exciting updates in the near future.